A suspect accused of dumping 380 tires in the Bonnie View area told investigators that Donald Wilke, the owner of Wilke Tire Service said, “I don’t care how you get rid of the tires, as long as it don’t involve me.”

The investigation may link hundreds, perhaps thousands of tires that have been dumped along South Texas rural roads.

Investigator Gary Wright, Lt. John Moehr and Constable Ben Zapata of Pct. 5 in Robstown met with Wesley Williamson on Feb. 10. Williamson provided a statement accusing Wilke of giving the “order” to get rid of the tires.

“He told us that Donnie left the back gate of Wilke Tire open for them. Mr. Williamson, when asked, said that Donnie did not pay them to dump the tires and that they had to pay for the gas used in the truck,” Wright reported.

The two men live on property belonging to Wilke.

“Mr. Williamson told us that the motorcycle tires and the tires with side walls cut out of them came from Wilke tire and were not at the property at 5313 Riverview Drive. He told us that those tires were the ones dumped along with the tires from the Riverview address,” Wright reported.

Both Williamson and Dentler were arrested for illegal dumping.

Sheriff Robert Bolcik said it would be up to the district attorney to present the case to the Refugio County Grand Jury in April and pursue other indictments as he sees fit.

Wilke said his accusers are “lying,” during a telephone conversation last Wednesday.

“It would be ludicrous for me to rent a trailer to dump 380 tires,” Wilke said. “It would be stupid for me to do anything like that. I dispose of tens of thousands of tires over a one-year period.”

The tire store owner says he has receipts to prove how he disposed of 40 trailers of tires last year, each containing 1,500 tires. Wilke says he believes the men collect tires from various small shops and dispose of them for $1.50 each.

Wright says that only a small number of tire shops carry and change motorcycle tires.

When asked where they dumped the tires, Williamson said, “beats the hell out of me, I didn’t know where we were. I don’t know anything about these county roads.”

“Greigg drove for a while and then stopped. He said that Greigg told him, ‘lets go Wes, lets go back to work.’ (Williamson) said he got into the back of the truck and started rolling tires out while Greigg drove. (Williamson) told us that they dumped three or four different loads of tires on the 18th of January,” Wright reported.

The Refugio investigator said he interviewed several U-Haul dealers where Williamson and Greigg Dentler regularly rented trucks. On Jan. 19, the men logged more than 200 miles, more than enough to get to Refugio and other local counties where the tires were dumped, Wright said. On another occasion, a rented truck logged more than 500 miles.

After dumping the first load of tires, Williamson told the investigators they drove back to Wilke Tire and loaded more tires from there before going back to the Riverview Drive property.

Williamson told the investigators they drove for approximately 45 minutes to an hour before they started dumping the tires. “He told us that Greigg Dentler would drive the U-Haul truck and that (Williamson) was in the back of the truck rolling out the tires. He said that their signal was that when the truck was empty, he would bang on the wall, Greigg would stop, I’d get out, close the back door and boom, ‘we’re gone.’”